Court sides with government in immigration case
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court is making it harder for noncitizens who are authorized to live permanently in the United States to argue they should be allowed to stay in the country if they've committed crimes.
The decision last Thursday split the court 5-4 along ideological lines.
The decision came in the case of Andre Barton, a Jamaican national and green card holder. In 1996, when he was a teenager, he was present when a friend fired a gun at the home of Barton's ex-girlfriend in Georgia. And in 2007 and 2008, he was convicted of drug possession in the state. His crimes made him eligible to be deported, and the government sought to remove him from the country in 2016. Barton argued he should be eligible to stay.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted in his opinion for the court's conservatives that it was important that Barton's 1996 crime took place in the first seven years he was admitted to the country. Kavanaugh wrote that "when a lawful permanent resident has amassed a criminal record of this kind," immigration law makes them ineligible to ask to be allowed to stay in the country.
Jutices rule for Conn. company in trademark case
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court is making it easier to get certain monetary awards in trademark infringement lawsuits.
The justices sided unanimously last Thursday with a Connecticut company, Romag, in its lawsuit against fashion accessory company Fossil.
Romag sells magnetic snaps that fasten wallets, handbags and other leather goods. In 2002, Fossil signed an agreement to use Romag fasteners in its products. But Romag later sued after learning that the factories Fossil hired in China to make its products were using counterfeit Romag fasteners.
A jury sided with Romag but said the company hadn't proved that Fossil's trademark infringement was "willful." The Supreme Court said last Thursday that under federal law, trademark infringement doesn't need to be found to be intentional for Romag to be awarded the profits Fossil earned thanks to its trademark violation.
Fossil is based in Texas. Romag said in a statement that it was pleased with the decision, which will "incentivize manufacturers to protect against counterfeiting in their increasingly global supply chains and will help protect the rights of small intellectual property owners such as Romag."
Court rejects EPA's narrow view of Clean Water Act
By Mark Sherman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court ruled last Thursday that sewage plants and other industries cannot avoid environmental requirements under landmark clean-water protections when they send dirty water on an indirect route to rivers, oceans and other navigable waterways.
Rejecting the Trump administration's views, the justices held by a 6-3 vote that the discharge of polluted water into the ground, rather than directly into nearby waterways, does not relieve an industry of complying with the Clean Water Act.
"We hold that the statute requires a permit when there is a direct discharge from a point source into navigable waters or when there is the functional equivalent of a direct discharge," Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the court.
The decision came in a closely watched case from Hawaii about whether a sewage treatment plant needs a federal permit when it sends wastewater deep underground, instead of discharging the treated flow directly into the Pacific Ocean. Studies have found the wastewater soon reaches the ocean and has damaged a coral reef near a Maui beach.
The Environmental Protection Agency under President Donald Trump reversed the agency's position that Breyer noted has appeared to work well for more than 30 years. That's among many actions the administration has taken to change course on environmental regulations, including making official just days ago a sweeping rollback of the Clean Water Act that would end federal protection for many of the nation's millions of miles of streams, arroyos and wetlands. Public health and environmental groups and some Western states, among other opponents, say the rollback would leave the waterways more vulnerable to pollution from development, industry and farms, and they have promised court fights.
In the Hawaii case, Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented. "Based on the statutory text and structure, I would hold that a permit is required only when a point source discharges pollutants directly into navigable waters," Thomas wrote.
David Henkin, a lawyer for the environmental group Earthjustice who argued the case in the high court, said, "This is unquestionably a win for people who are concerned about protecting clean water in the United States."
Sewage plants and other polluters must get a permit under the Clean Water Act when pollutants go through a pipe from their source to a body of water. The question in this case was whether a permit is needed when the pollutant first passes through the soil or groundwater.
Maui injects 3 million to 5 million gallons a day of treated wastewater into wells beneath the Lahaina Wastewater Reclamation Facility, which sits about a half-mile from the Pacific shoreline. Environmental groups in Hawaii sued Maui after studies using dyes to trace the flow showed more than half the discharge from two wells was entering the ocean in a narrow area. They won a ruling from the federal appeals court based in San Francisco.
Breyer raised concerns during arguments in November that a ruling for Maui would provide a "road map" for polluters to evade federal permit requirements.
Still, the court did not go as far as the federal appeals court, which adopted a standard that would have brought even more groundwater discharges under the clean water law.
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Associated Press writer Ellen Knickmeyer contributed to this report.
Published: Mon, Apr 27, 2020
